Iron Winter (Northland 3) (42 page)

‘It was a mighty throng that left New Hattusa; it was a much greater host by the time we reached the southern ports. There we began the process of transport across the sea. This was led by
our allies of Hantilios, who as you know are expert seafarers.’

Fabius grunted. ‘I know my history, sir. That city was founded under the protection of the Hatti kings in the first place. It is no wonder its leaders serve you now.’

‘At a price, as you can imagine, good Fabius, I expect our grandsons still to be paying it off in instalments. But Hantilios served us well. Their shipwrights built special vessels for the
first landing here on the African shore, which I myself led.’

‘Ah. The famous flat-bottomed boats that drive up the beaches.’

‘An ancient design, revived and reworked.’

‘My men resisted fiercely.’

‘Yes. As you know, even the first landing was a battle that would dwarf most in human history. Then it was a question of securing our position, of building the harbour to accommodate the
hordes who followed us, and preparing for the greater war to come.’

‘Your harbour is impressive.’

‘We used Northlander engineers, and their expertise in growstone. We are involved in tremendous undertakings, General.’

‘Indeed. You spoke of the King. Uhhaziti is the crown prince, as the whole world knows. Since the death of My Sun the King Hattusili—’

‘There will be no coronation until this migration is done,’ Arnuwanda said. ‘Uhhaziti has insisted on it. He will be crowned in Carthage, on the Byrsa, and anointed by the
Father of the Churches when your greatest temple has been rededicated to the worship of Jesus Sharruma. Not until then.’

Fabius nodded gravely. ‘And I, of course, will stop that from ever happening.’

‘We understand each other,’ Arnuwanda said. He glanced curiously at Nelo. ‘Do I recognise this boy?’

‘He serves me.’

Mago took the chance to push himself forward, and spoke in Carthaginian. ‘The boy answers to me; I am his commander. He is a Northlander. You may remember him from that chilly place. And
me, perhaps, Prince?’

Arnuwanda stopped, and studied Mago, and replied in the same tongue. ‘I think I remember you. Your name, though . . .’ He hesitated, an obvious bit of play-acting.

Mago, infuriated, snapped out his name. ‘My father is—’

‘Yes, yes. So we meet again. Fate draws us all together, it seems. Well—’ and he switched back to Nesili, ‘—let us walk on and talk some more, Fabius. It’s
refreshing to hear a Latin accent, frankly. So much more melodious than the coarse Can’nai tongue of these fellows . . .’

The Hatti’s new city had no name. This, it seemed, was deliberate, a signal of its impermanence; it was an undertaking the size of New Hattusa itself, but it was only a
way station on the road that led to Carthage. The core of it, however, was a military camp, and Arnuwanda led Fabius’ party through the wider suburbs to that austere heart. They had to leave
the bulk of the Carthaginian force outside, including Mago, who fumed as Nelo walked on at Fabius’ side, with the Carthaginian dignitaries and under the great banner of the joined gods.

The camp itself was surrounded by fortifications, ditches and berms. Perhaps, Nelo thought, the Hatti rulers feared their own restless people as much as they feared a Carthaginian attack –
after all, there was an awful lot of them. Within the fortification, tents and sod huts housed the soldiers. In some ways it was typical of any military camp, with many of the troops at ease
this morning, or in training. Wagons trundled, laden with loaves of tough-looking bread; unlike the Carthaginians, Hatti troops did not routinely bake their own bread. In one open area horseback
archers were training, and the party stopped to watch the spectacular sight. The men, fully armoured, would run their steeds at a target and fling off their arrows without stopping.

Arnuwanda grinned. ‘I’ve had a go at that myself, in my time. The rewards are graded. You get a cup of wine if you hit the god’s eye in the centre, a cup of horse’s piss
if you miss altogether.’

‘And which vintage did you sample, my lord?’ asked Fabius.

Arnuwanda laughed.

They walked on to an area where more archers were working on their equipment. Evidently these men made their own arrows and bows. They stared at the Carthaginians.

‘This is a fine art that I find fascinating,’ the prince said. ‘Making the bowstave itself, for instance. You must use the right kind of wood, of course, and not just that,
wood from the right part of the tree for each component. Heartwood for the belly of the bow and sapwood for the spine, so it flexes, you see. A delicate business. And here they are making arrows .
. .’

The men worked with chisels, adzes and knives, fine tools of iron, bronze, even flint. They fixed arrowheads of various kinds to shafts with silk thread and glue, and tied on feathers as
flights.

‘The arrowheads have different shapes for different purposes,’ Arnuwanda said. ‘I know that much. One kind is designed to pierce armour. Another sort – like that
fellow’s, with the deep flanges – will knock down a deer.’

‘Or a war horse.’

‘Quite so.’

In another open area carpenters and teams of soldiers and slaves laboured over large wooden structures that Nelo could not recognise.

‘Siege engines,’ Fabius murmured to Nelo. ‘Or bits of them. I wonder where they got the wood? Maybe they took some of their ships apart. Rather an ominous sight – and one
I’m sure we’re meant to witness. Make sure you draw this well, boy; the information may be valuable, in advance of the day we see these beasts trundling up to Carthage’s
walls.’

Nelo sketched busily.

As they walked on he was always aware of the wider city beyond the core of this military camp. In blocks defined by gullies for drainage or sewage, buildings were being put up, sod huts,
occasional structures of stone perhaps robbed from abandoned Utica. The place was unfinished but had already taken on a kind of human life, with people coming and going, slave-women with baskets of
washing going down to the river, old folk sitting on porches, children running and laughing. There were even marketplaces with a few dusty heaps of shoes, tunics, potatoes, cabbages for sale. He
had seen the straight-line layout of the place from the rise. Evidently the new city had been planned and laid out before the first inhabitant had moved in, and set out like a sketch on the
countryside. Now that outline was being coloured in by this muddy mass of people. But in this first rushed impression, Nelo thought there were few babies or old folk, few very young or very old,
who must have been winnowed out by the March. He wondered how to capture all this on paper.

Then he saw two laughing boys, no older than five or six, mock-fighting with wooden swords, copying the soldiers. It had taken the Hatti a year to complete their March from New Hattusa to this
place, and a year was a long time in the lives of these boys. Perhaps they barely remembered the great city they had left behind. And they were what Nelo chose to sketch, with the strange temporary
city in the background, capturing their moment of innocent play for ever.

A group of soldiers sat beside a fire, with a pail of water before them. They set pebbles and olive pits on hot rocks by the fire, every so often prodding them to see how warm
they were. They glanced up at the Carthaginian party with blank hostility.

Fabius said, ‘Tell me what these men are doing, sir.’

Arnuwanda said, ‘Just a little ritual our soldiers go through to boost their spirits. These men are scouts; they have seen Carthage, and your ferocious soldiers and your towering defences.
These men must see the enemy truthfully, and report on his strength, truthfully. But truth crushes the spirit, do you see? And so we give them this. The enemy’s strength is like the heat of
that olive stone. It spits and roars as the stones will when they are put in the water. But it will subside quickly, as will your resistance when the war comes.’

‘Our soldiers have rituals. Different, but the same idea.’ Fabius glanced around, squinting. ‘Sometimes I think that if you could put every soldier in the world in a tremendous
camp like this one, and if you kept them all fed, and provided a little wine, a few whores, and let them burn up their energy in a few wrestling contests and such, there need never be war
again.’

‘You have a sentimental streak, Roman. I don’t agree. War is in our hearts. We Hatti know that; my dynasty has survived millennia by waging constant war against our enemies. War is
what we are
for
, Fabius. It is why the gods created us. That’s my view, anyhow, though you’ll find some of Jesus’ more weak-mouthed apologists with differing ideas. And
this war, in particular, is inevitable.’

‘How many people have you brought over?’

‘Now we are settled we are trying to count them. My guess – perhaps as many as a million.’

Fabius had to check he understood the Nesili word. ‘A
million.
’

‘We did drain all the Land of the Hatti, Fabius. And there are more on the way; you saw the ships.’

‘And, whoever wins or loses this war – how many must die, on either side?’

‘That is in the hands of the gods.’

‘Literally so, perhaps,’ Fabius said. ‘The Trojans used to see war as a kind of trial. Before the fight you would argue your case before the gods, your own and your
enemy’s. And then the war itself was a resolution of that trial.’

‘You know your history.’

‘In such an age as this, I find it helps.’

The soldiers scooped up the hot pebbles with their bare hands and chucked them into the water, where they created a hissing of bubbles, an evanescent rage, before quickly subsiding. Fabius
watched this little ritual, and grinned, showing his teeth. Nelo sketched the soldiers and the water and the pebbles, and Fabius’ grinning face.

The smoke from the burning suburbs of Quinsai billowed across the water as the small boat bearing Avatak and Pyxeas pulled away from the jetty, rowed by a scrawny young Mongol.
The harbour was crowded with rowboats and tenders, all trying to leave the city. Small sounds carried over the water, the calling of the crews, the lapping waves, the splash of oars and the snap of
sails – and graver sounds from the land, the crump of a collapsing building, throatier roars that might be the firing of eruptors.

Further out, outside the harbour, the great ships floated on the still ocean water. Some were magnificent, serene, their decks crowded with masts like spindly forests – serene at least
compared to the frantic scenes in the city. Avatak wondered which of them was waiting for him and Pyxeas.

Pyxeas himself was huddled over, wrapped in a coarse blanket against the unseasonal chill of this early summer day, and with one liver-spotted hand resting on the small trunk that contained his
treasure, the records of his study with Bolghai in Daidu. He muttered to himself, barely audible. He seemed to take no notice of the scene around him, the burning city, the crowded harbour.

The Mongol boy was grinning at Avatak as he rowed. ‘He sick?’ He spoke in heavily accented Persian.

‘I don’t have much of that tongue.’

‘Yes-yes-yes. Nor me. Ha!’ His open mouth revealed gappy teeth, as if the rest had been knocked out. He looked no older than twenty. He was skinny for a Mongol, and the clothes he
wore were filthy rags. ‘We get by, you and me.’

‘His name is Pyxeas. He’s a . . .’ Scholar. Avatak tapped his head. ‘He thinks. Better than other people.’

The Mongol shrugged. ‘Not sick?’

‘He’s just old. If you’re old you’re sick all the time.’

‘Yes-yes-yes. My father, his father, his father, the same. Safe on boat. Listen. Bayan. My name – Bayan. You want anything on the boat, you come to me. Bayan. You remember,
yes-yes-yes.’

Avatak studied him. Ever since they had come to Quinsai they had been surrounded by people trying to sell them something. ‘You’re a Mongol. What’s a Mongol doing at
sea?’

Bayan grinned again. ‘Never liked horses. Horses kick me. I ran away to sea, made some money. Came back, lost money, back to sea. Make more money. Ha! My bad luck, the only Mongol in the
world who doesn’t like horses. You need anything, ask for Bayan. Remember.’

‘I’ll remember.’

Pyxeas was stirring. He raised one hand to point, but his fingers would not fully extend.

Avatak switched to Northlander. ‘Scholar? What is it?’

‘Our ship.’

The craft was not the largest, but big enough, Avatak thought, as Bayan rowed the length of its hull – big enough to have dwarfed the fleets that sailed from ports like Hantilios into the
puddle of the Middle Sea, even most of the craft that sailed from Northland’s Wall harbours to take on the Western Ocean. And, of course, it would have utterly overshadowed the little fishing
boats of Avatak’s people.

Bayan’s boat was only one of a dozen that crowded around the great ship now, bearing passengers, bales of goods, even animals. The crew worked from the top deck and leaned out of open
hatchways, hauling up stuff with ropes and pulleys, or carrying it on their backs up ladders. The ship’s hull was blackened by fire and much patched; you could see the joins where whole
sections had been replaced, fresh planking hammered home and sealed with greyish paste. Close to, the wooden flank smelled of deep-ingrained brine. It was not a pretty ship, like the yachts that
had sailed the tame lakes of Daidu for the pleasure of the Khan’s courtiers. But Avatak felt reassured at its very roughness. This was a working vessel that had seen tough times before, and
survived them; there was every chance, then, that it would survive a little longer, and its passengers along with it.

Bayan brought them to a ladder, dangling in the water. Their few goods were easily transferred by Bayan and a couple of sailors. Avatak would be able to clamber up the ladder easily, but it was
soon evident that Pyxeas would not. There was a brief, farcical scene as the stubborn old man tried anyhow, but his gnarled hands would not grip the rope rungs, his booted feet slipped, and he
could not raise his weight – he could barely stand, let alone climb. So Bayan and Avatak tried to help him, the Mongol pulling his arms from above, Avatak pushing from below. Other crew
gathered on the deck above, offering ribald advice in a dozen tongues.